1960. The first time I smoked hashish was in the ancient city of Acco in Israel. I did not know what to expect, but what I remember was that I could see the wind. The next few years I had no encounter with any entheogens.1964, Greenwich Village N.Y. I was introduced to my first LSD trip. The experience put me face to face with parallel worlds and levels of consciousness, akin to climbing a mountain: the higher you climb the more you see of the earth. But this was more like taking off in a spaceship.
Until 1965 I used models and still lives as subject matter for my paintings. At the time I was working as a freelance textile designer, and the pattern’s design created optical illusions which led me to paint a series of oils on paper influenced by these patterns.
Focusing onto the texture of the paint revealed numerous layers. Inside the texture of the paint-strokes appeared countless images: fields, faces, architecture, spontaneous Rembrandts, Picassos, Impressionism and OpArt mixed with Realism, creating endless styles of painting.
Intrigued, I permeated the paper with colors applied haphazardly. That surface was like a crystal ball where I could see, select and choose shapes - not unlike an artist using the medium of collage - collecting pictures already in existence to assemble into a meaningful vision. With every brush stroke a world unfolded. Zooming in closer into the micro details, another vista would appear: a kind of fractal event. From that point I entered the realm of imagination, no longer bound by the limitation and dependence on an outside model. Form and color flowed freely in a primordial chaos.
Deciding not to rely on a predetermined image, I allowed the running of the colors on the paper to invent forms and take me on a journey of discovery. One day while painting I experienced a golden flash of light pouring out from the top of my head. I faced up to an edifice of organisms, an organized constant pulsating life, a glimpse into eternity - the Prima Materia. I knew that I had to go back to the very foundation and search for an understanding of the phenomena of life through the basic elements of paint.
I always felt a great respect for the LSD journey, recognizing that it was like charging a battery that propelled one into unknown energy fields... like a step into space. But it was also very important to bring back the experience and manifest it in a physical medium. Otherwise the energy would be lost and work against oneself.

VISIONARY REVUE

TRANSMUTATION
Olga Spiegel

I came across a book by Allan Watts, The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness (written in 1962), and reading it solidified and verbalized these new visions.1966. My first encounter with Psilosybin, and the only one, but incredibly memorable. It was very different from LSD. I found myself totally immersed in fields of brilliant colors and swirling Moire patterns which engulfed me so that I had no recollection of any other space.
When I came down, I wanted to make sure I wouldn't forget this visual exhilaration. Using day-glow paints and a primary color pallet, I filled the canvas with undulating Moire patterns and, at the center, a golden figure flying upward.Woodstock 1966. The images that emerged at that time lead me to a more organized application of forms with straight-edge optical effects and color energy fields. Juxtaposition of primary colors created after-images that were electrifying, rousing in front of my eyes.
I created a series of canvases in various in sizes and shapes, toned with equally intense combinations of red/green, blue/orange, yellow/purple - all interactions of opposites. Colors lept off the canvas, creating after-images that were imbued with energy and surface tension - seducing the eye and beckoning for attention. Their effects became a window into another space.

FALL 2007

WIDENING HORIZON
Olga Spiegel

1967. Music played an important role. My husband played the piano, and we lived in raw lofts adapted into living and studio space (actually it was practically all studio space). Jam sessions of Avant-Garde Jazz and New Music surrounded me. Many of the musicians were also dedicated to the pursuit of the new and out-of-the-ordinary, spinning away from the limitation of past forms.
A lot of the music was improvisational, a primal cosmic wailing tuned into an expansion of creative boundaries. Through the art I could see an incoming ray of thought energies, an evolutionary unfolding of the mind, associations about nature in its multitude of forms, the universe telling the story of life.
I painted in the midst of the musicians playing, feeling these were special times... a Renaissance... a shedding of the imprinting... an exuberance of invention.1969. The first group show I participated in was titled Prima Materia.1971. The group show Visionary Artists.1970. I came across an Art Magazine called Avant Garde where I discovered Ernst Fuchs, Erich Brauer, Dieter Schwertberger, Jorgen Boberg and other European artists. The classicism and the symbolism deeply impressed me .1971/1972. I painted Widening Horizon - a synthesis and a departure from the paintings of the 60’s. The organic formations were more realistic, causing symbolic imagery to emerge…Biological photographs of the inside of the body were the source of inspiration, addressing death, rebirth and transformation.

VISIONARY REVUE

SECRET
Olga Spiegel

However, I felt that something was missing. The painting lacked depth and perspective. This insight led me to a metamorphosis.1973 …Austria. I learned the Mischtechnique (the Old Masters technique of tempera and oil glazing) at a seminar with Ernst Fuchs, whose paintings were in the Avant Garde magazine I'd seen a few years earlier (a wonderful but short lived publication).
I sensed that my groping had landed me in the midst of a group of artists whose quest bore a strong kinship with my own, and that a lot of the Art had to do with the unfolding of an inner process, an alchemical art of transmutation, the higher self’s messages to be deciphered through images and symbols.
The Old Masters technique creates a support for more realism and depth, allowing improvisation to ride on a strong technical base, where intuition can soar freely. This seminar and my meeting with Fuchs, De Es, Isaac Abrams, Philip Rubinov Jacobson and many other inspiring artists, became a major turning point.
For me personally, this technique translated into a Space Age imagery with metaphysical overtones, a widening point of view, exploring humanity’s eternal questions about the unknown.
Following my experience in Austria, I began a series of paintings that had a mirrored Rorscharch image with a figure appearing at the center, such as Time Machine and Body as a Spaceship.
In Rendezvous in Space, a long journey was undertaken, its thematic focus on Microcosmic time and space.

TIME MACHINE
Olga Spiegel

FALL 2007

RENDEZVOUS IN SPACE
Olga Spiegel

Being ness the ultimate spaceship, a morphing from one dimension into another.
I had gotten to a place where I could let my subconscious control the brush and lead me into a dance with the spirit.
Sometimes my imagination would take me into the darker layers of the soul where I would invent new environments, a sort of psychedelic surrealism.
I wanted to liberate myself from everyday form and shape, find new shapes with new meanings, pure imagination.
I wanted to follow my imagination into ever widening horizons of the spiritual universe, see where the journey leads.
Sometimes I worked under the influence, sometimes not.
Around 1977 I took my last LSD trip. I found it hard to coordinate the speed of my thoughts with the hand brush mechanism. The series of paintings that followed were called Crystal Cities, Phenomena - an exploration of rainbows, then Seascapes, and more recently, Digital Paintings.
To speak in a universal tongue of futuristic dreams and furtive inklings of possible outcomes and multileveled civilizations bequeaths a promise of new life which inhabits the future, seeing the freedom beyond the stage.

BODY AS A SPACESHIP
Olga Spiegel

VISIONARY REVUE

Fine art does not always fit within a context,
it is more like science searching for a cure.
Hidden in a fractal dimension,
a cosmic ricochet surfs into a realm
incessantly reinventing itself,
journeys into fantastic dimensions.
As our imagination expands so does the universe,
it is the energy that fuels survival.

WHO WHAT WHERE
Olga Spiegel

FALL 2007

OLGA SPIEGEL
BIOGRAPHY

Olga Spiegel was brought up and trained in Europe, lives and established her studio in New York. Her work has shown in galleries and private collections in Europe and America and has been cited in many books and publications. The work has evolved from the abstract and optical energy field influences of the 1960s, through later study of the Old Master's technique with Ernst Fuchs, to her current unique visionary alphabet that has lately included computer digital paintings.
Nurtured by Psychedelic Art, European Fantastic Realism, Surrealism and Science Fiction, her art points to an inner process, a chemical visual interaction where the inner self's messages are deciphered through images and symbols taking the viewer into an edgy realm of realism and unnamable forms. On the wings of improvisation, free flowing images and color create associations to uncover a mysterious universe. Ancient icons and space age imagery with metaphysical overtones reveal an evolutionary flowering, with nature and its organisms populated into myriad forms.